Expansion Funds for Insight Platform Streetbees

In London, tech-enabled customer insights platform Streetbees has raised $12m in a Series A round of funding, which it will use to further develop its Always On machine learning technology and expand its UK and US teams.

Streetbees combines artificial intelligence and geolocation technology to collect data from more than one million users (or 'bees') across 150 countries. Bees use the firm's chat-style app to share moments from their daily lives through videos, photos and text. By applying advanced natural language processing technology to the results, the company can uncover not just what users do, but also why they do it and what they may do next.

New funding has been led by Atomico, with participation from all existing investors including LocalGlobe, Octopus and BGF Ventures. Streetbees, which currently employs 75 people at its London headquarters and in Lisbon, will use its new funds to expand its data science team, develop its community networks across the world, and grow in the US, where the company opened an office in January.

CEO Tugce Bulut (pictured) comments: 'Human behaviour is too complex to standardise and understand with multiple-choice questions and automated analysis, but this is what most research groups dish up time and time again. Streetbees, which is backed by some of Europe's smartest investors, captures the detail within people's lives at scale and analyses it, helping companies both understand the bigger picture and act like an innovative start-up that has intimate knowledge of local markets'.

Web site: www.streetbees.com .